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SonnyZA

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Hello,

I was hoping to get some feedback/advice from the mybroadband crew as to how i can take my business to the next level. I recently launched a website called noteninja.co.za and its purpose is to serve as an online study note marketplace for students around South Africa. We allow students/tutors to upload study notes to the site and then allow users to purchase the rights to download that note.

I have received great feedback on the site but I am having trouble reaching students and letting them know we exist. I have started building a facebook presense by running a facebook competition for the month of July with prizes at the end of each week (find us on facebook to enter).

I went to Unisa myself and their students are the most difficult to contact as they mostly come to campus to write exams/register. I was wondering if anyone has been to other universities and have some good ideas on how to reach students. Maybe magazine publications or locations of notice boards that might be useful. Perhaps you know of some students that could be brand ambassadors for us and promote the website and we would pay them to do so. If you know of any student based websites or other platforms that might help us get the word out. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.
 
Tuks FM, UJ FM
If you have specific subjects you are targeting, then email the faculty office and ask them to message their group distribution lists
 
Thanks for the feedback. I like the idea of getting some radio time, i will start investigating.
 
^^man bear pig.... Half man, half bear pig
 
@ op, email or get a few hot chicks to hand out flyers at the campus.

There was a day wen sprite and axe was at UKZN, sprite was giving away free stuff and axe had their fallen angels hand out flyers.... Axe tent was ten times busier....
 
manbearpig there was some maintenance done yesterday. Could you try again and confirm its still not loading?.

Hot girls handing out information is always a winner! However we dont have a huge budget and to do this at every campus at every university might be to costly. But ill check some prices and see if its viable. Thanks
 
It works now.

I think your best marketing will be word of mouth. To get that to work, you need to have people be totally blown away by the site when they see it. I think you have a good idea, and the site looks great at the moment.

Your biggest problem at the moment is that people don't know if you have no content, or if you have a lot of content. So i think a lot of people will come on to the site, read about it for a few seconds, and then close it.

You want to make sure that you have a ****load of notes already. This is very important. People will search for one of their subjects immediately, and if they dont find something, they will think the site is a waste of time and never return. So it will be really difficult I think.

Once you have content, think about displaying some of the newest uploads on the front page so that people can have a look. Maybe the first page of some notes or something. Then when they scroll down or click next, they have to register. People love free stuff, so give them something to hook them in.

Anyway, I think your biggest problem is getting content. People won't upload stuff if there isn't a market, and people won't visit the site if there isn't content. You need to source to stuff initially, which will cost time and money, or you must pay people to upload notes without them being downloaded at all.

Also, did you make the site in Ruby/Python? What did you use?
 
How does your revenue run? Do you pay people to upload? Or give them a share of each download? Since you're new-ish and lacking in users and content I'd try to make it very profitable for your uploaders. Cut out all your profit and give it to the users otherwise you just won't reach critical mass.

As to marketing. I agree with the hot chick and flyer model for you.
 
I think you hit the nail on the head manbearpig. I had a chat with the developers and hopefully by Monday next week we are going to revamp the home page so that it shows a news block for us to show the competitions we are running and then 2 other blocks. 1 to show the most recently uploaded notes and then the other to show "Requested notes". We are going to put a button on ever note page that allows you to click "Request notes" this way we can show the demand for certain subjects and get people motivated to upload content.

So far the people who have heard about us are pretty keen on the idea of the site and i think the content will come with exposure which is my biggest problem. Trying to reach the Unisa students is very difficult. We are going to try some lamp/bin advertising and cover the routes to the Unisa/Varsity college campus. Its a form of advertising we can afford to do but im not sure how effective it will be. We are also going to proceed with the promotions mainly around Varsity College as we can easily get the students attention with some good looking ladies and we can also pinpoint a few intersections they have to go through to get to campus.

Our revenue structure is currently running like this. We create "note types" and set the prices for them. So a full exam study guide covering all the content for an exam will cost R150. This has caused a few problems already as peoples notes are quite unique and difficult to categorise. An example: One of our users had full study guide summary notes but they were only 7 pages. This user uploaded them to "1 chapter study notes" because they felt the price was more suitable. To fix this we are going to implement a new system where the user can set their own price for any content they upload. We will just offer some guidelines and set a price ceiling to stop ridiculous prices being set.

NoteNinja takes 50% of the sale and the other 50% goes to the uploader. This may seem like a large percentage to some but as we explain to our users that the platform offers quite a few payment methods like credit card / debit card and even Ukash vouchers (You buy it at pick n pay and can upload to our site incase you dont have a credit/debit card) which all cost us money to offer. We also need to gain traction as being discussed in this thread otherwise we cannot afford to keep the site going. This means any money that comes in will go straight back out to reach critical mass and expand rapidly to other Universities.

The site has been developed in C# using MVC3 i believe.
 
Hey SonnyZA,

Just an idea - perhaps you should consider adding a "directory" of all "available / existing" notes.

Sometimes one might just want to first see what you have available.
 
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by your new structure, but here is an idea. It might be the same as your already mentioned, but have a look at Graphic River.

All the content is visible and browsable. They are uploaded by users. The users choose the categories and the price and all the details. There are also ratings and comments on all the content.

I think this will be your best approach. All you have to do is implement the main structures like categories for subjects and universities. People will upload notes and set their own price (you can then take 50%). Obviously one person with a good set of notes can sell that set to hundreds of people and make a lot of money. They will then comment and rate that set highly.

You should definitely implement some kind of request system where students can request a specific subject. The uploaders can then see what is in demand and try and source those notes.

Some kind of public forum where people can have discussions is also not a bad idea.

Good luck with the site.

PS. Two other things: Make the "Find notes for your lectures" stand out more. When somebody comes on to the site it should be the first thing they see. Otherwise the graphics and text and stuff can leave you confused over what the point of the site is.

Also, in terms of new people that see the site and want to test it. Always try to give them the option to browse. People love browsing and hate having to type search queries in to search bars (when they are not even sure it will find something). So if I were you I would put the main categories on the front page and allow people to get to their universities and subjects within 2-3 clicks.
 
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